Thursday, October 16, 2014

McCullough wrote that Cain was cut from the freshman basketball team, and his mother wouldn’t allow him to play football.

“If I would have made the basketball team, there’s no chance I would have played baseball,” Cain told McCullough. “I know that for sure. There’s no chance.”

Cain, 28, came from football country — Madison County High School in northern Florida and Tallahassee Community College. Now he’s the talk of baseball and is poised to earn $2 million or more through salary arbitration next season.

Is this the traditional path to major-league stardom? No, but Cain’s story should remind everyone in the chain of youth sports — high school coaches, college coaches, professional organizations, Major League Baseball and (most importantly) families — that success in baseball is largely a function of athletic ability and the opportunity to play, even if a kid’s first exposure to the game is as a teenager.

Baseball needs to become more aggressive in marketing itself to our country’s best young athletes, at a time when many parents are giving serious thought to whether they want their sons associated with football’s violent culture. For a 16-year-old with equal potential in the two sports, baseball offers a far better future than football by almost any objective measure.